A Prologue to Becoming a Monster: Claude Ligon’s Nissan GTR

The GTR has been nicknamed the “Godzilla” of the import world. The GTR you’re feasting your eyes on, owned by Claude, is on the path to becoming a truly amazing machine. He has already made this car look sleek but also kept close to the GTR’s bodylines that it was originally born with.

Claude’s love for Japanese cars all started back in the 90’s with a Nissan 300zx. Since then he’s had multiple Nissan’s and Infiniti’s and then in 2008 he saw his first GTR and fell in love. In July of the following year, he received his Ivory White GTR and was fully content with just leaving it the way it came out of the factory. After being coerced by his son and Chris Yi, who owns a local performance shop, Claude decided that his GTR needed to be a little closer to the earth and that was going to be it.

Once Claude started to mod his GTR there was no stopping as he is a far cry from just lowering his Nissan. Now he is out to build a GTR that not only gets noticed but one that will turn the head of every individual at a show. Claude is currently orchestrating a two stage build to get him to his goal. The completion of stage 1 is how it sits now, and next up will be performance and will mostly end with this GTR screaming through the streets when he stomps on the gas.

Claude’s GTR is already an amazing car and has been well put together, yet he still has a whole bag of tricks for this Nissan. I’m sure the next time we see his GTR it will truly be a force to be reckoned with as he will be making sure that this thing is living up to the Godzilla nickname it has been given.

Claude would like to thank the following:

Cristian and the Canibeat Team, Jamal Allen for setting it all up, and Kevin Choi for the masterful shoot. Special thanks to Owner Chris Yi, his protégé Will Wang and the Elite Importz Team for the Project build; Joe Bogdany for his fabrication expertise and dedicated project assistance, and my Son, Jason Ligon, for his ‘self-appointed’ role as Lead Project Orchestrator.